Reaction & Review | The Forgotten Wells

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm gonna be covering a Swedish horror film from 1989. That movie is "The Forgotten Wells".

Now I can tell you, guys, a couple of things I know about this movie. First of all, it was co-directed by a man named Mats Helge Olsson. And a lot of you reading this for the first time probably have no idea who that is. Well, the reason why I brought up his name is because I actually covered two of his movies that I reviewed several years ago for this series. The first one was "The Ninja Mission". A movie that was ultimately just a stupid plotless action film with little to no substance whatsoever. And then shortly after that, I reviewed it's supposed sequel "The Russian Ninja". Which actually ended up being worse than it's predecessor, what with it having a confusing plot, acting that was stilted and horribly dubbed in, and it also had some of the worst fight choreography I had seen from almost any movie in a *long* time. Yeah...I wasn't really a big fan of either one of those movies.

And I also mentioned before that I wasn't gonna cover anymore of his movies that were tied into "The Ninja Mission". Because that was his most successful movie and he tried to replicate that success by making at least several "sequels" to "The Ninja Mission", despite "The Russian Ninja" having almost no connection to the first movie at all outside of the title involving ninjas. However, I'm not gonna go too deep into that technicality there. So anyway, while I'm not gonna anymore of his sequels to "The Ninja Mission", I was able to find something else that he directed, which would be tonight's movie. Which I believe may also be the first time I'm ever covering a horror movie from Sweden. So that's definitely something different.

I should also mention right here that this movie is also gonna be Olsson's last chance to try and win me over as a fan. And as much as I'd like to tell you that I have some faith in this movie, there is *one* thing that could potentially destroy it. You see, I was doing a little bit of digging on this movie. And I while was able to not spoil myself on what the plot was about, I did find something out about the writing credit to this movie. You see, guys, this movie, and I am *not* kidding when I tell you this, has a grand total...of 7 writers. Yes, it took 7 people to write the script to this thing! Several of them I can confirm are two of the cast members of this movie and Mats Helge Olsson himself. So if this movie ends up sucking in some way, I can put part of the blame on Olsson, and it'll prove, at least to me, that the man cannot write for shit.

Now I admit, I'm probably getting ahead of myself here. I want this movie to at least be interesting. I almost wanted to say it'll be good, but based on the past couple of movies I watched from this director, "good" is probably asking for too much here. But, it could still be interesting on some kind of level. I don't know if that's gonna be enough to save this movie, but I'm still gonna hold out some hopes here. And the only way I'm gonna find out if this movie is gonna be interesting at all, is if I shut up, and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "The Forgotten Wells".

9 minutes later

OK, I have a really stupid question here, and I know there's probably some kind of reasoning for it, but I want to ask this. So this guy who broke into this mental hospital just released this one patient who's face is also wrapped up in bandages, and the thing I gotta ask about the guy who broke into the hospital is why the hell is he wearing pantyhose over his head? Is that meant to be some sort of disguise for our perpetrator? And if it is, then that has got to be one of the *stupidest* fucking disguises I have ever seen. Couldn't he have gotten something normal to wear like a mask or something? I'm just asking, because his identity would be a *lot* safer that way, rather than wearing pantyhose that doesn't disguise his face whatsoever. But hey, *maybe* that's just me.

11 minutes later

So the title of the movie comes from our description from Savage, as he explains about the mission he's been given to his friends, in which some kid disappeared in a well system that was meant to act as a supply unit for water. And the house that our heroes are going to is suppose to be haunted because it was built on top of the well system that the kid disappeared into 20 years ago. OK, at *least* they explained that much. And honestly, guys, so far, this movie has actually been OK. I can't believe I'm saying that about a movie from Mats Helge Olsson, but it's been surprisingly competent so far! And I'm hoping it stays this way for the next hour or so.

20 minutes later

You know, guys, as much as I'm gonna admit that I'm still interested to see where this movie is going, I just wish it would pick itself up a bit. Because our story is kind of moving at a glacial pace right now, and nothing of interest has happened since then. Hoping maybe the movie will turn itself around soon, though I'm not sure if it will or not.

20 minutes later

I'm really sorry, guys, if I haven't been saying a whole lot, but unfortunately, this movie hasn't really given me a whole lot to work with. I can see that the movie is trying to do something interesting, but for some reason, it just feels a little bit off to me. I'm not sure what it is just yet, but I'll try to get into all that once the movie is done.

The Review

OK, that was a rather...dubious ending there. But anyway, guys, that was "The Forgotten Wells". Let me go ahead and shut the movie off here...OK. Huh, um...where to even start with this one?

Well, I did state earlier that if this movie sucked as much as the previous two films I watched from Mats Helge Olsson, then I would rightfully claim that this guy does not know how to write a decent story. And while I didn't outright say this earlier, I would've possibly banned all of his movies from being covered for this series, because I've given Olsson 3 chances to try and prove to me that he can make a decent movie. Well...I can actually say that while this movie is ridiculously flawed, I am willing to say that it's quite possibly the most competent film he's made so far. Mind you now, when I say it's competent, I am in no way saying that the movie is good. However, when in comparison from his previous two outings, it is far better than what I was expecting. I thought it was just gonna flat out suck like everything else he has made. But no, surprisingly, it turned out to be somewhat decent.

I guess, rather than just me blabbering on about what I thought about the movie, let's actually try to talk about it in more detail. Let's start with the writing. The writing here *almost* works. Like I stated earlier, it's about this TV film crew that goes to this abandoned house to try and locate a boy that fell into a well system about 20 years ago, and that the house itself is apparently haunted, possibly by the kid that disappeared there all those years ago. I should also mention that there is another piece to this story that I sorta left out. The other reason why they're going out to this house, aside from what I just stated earlier, is because this kid has a massive fortune that is gonna be inherited, unless this kid is found within 36 hours. The reason why is because it's almost 20 years ago today that he fell into the well system and was never found afterwards. And unless our film crew can find him first, then the kid is gonna be declared legally dead, and his fortune will be inherited by a different family member. And by family member, I'm talking about our villains for this movie, Lamar and Tanner. Lamar is the more important character of the two, because he's also the Lieutenant of the district he's running, and the abandoned house counts as part of his district. Apparently, from what I could gather, he also wants the fortune for himself, and I'm going to assume that he just wants our heroes dead, which is how we go into later in the film in which it decides to go in a somewhat different direction.

In fact, let's actually talk about something that's been bothering me about this movie. Earlier, I said that the film, even though it was trying to be interesting despite moving at a somewhat glacial pace (which I'll talk about later), something about it just felt a little bit off to me. And I believe I figured what that problem was. See, earlier, I stated this movie's genre as a horror movie. And for like the first 40-45 minutes or so, it was sticking towards that genre. But after Tanner and his gang start to enter the picture, the movie suddenly shifts into being an action movie which then turned into a home invasion flick, as we see our heroes, mainly our two male ones, trying to fight off Lamar's gang in the caves. And it really felt like it was just going back to the same roots that I remembered from when I watched Mat Helge Olsson's previous two outings for this series. Speaking of which, the ending, and I swear to God this just came to me as I was watching the movie, felt like it was a beat-for-beat copy and paste ending to how "The Russian Ninja" played out. Mind you, it's been years since I last watched it and I tried my best to block that movie out of my memory, but for *some* reason, this movie's ending played out almost exactly how "The Russian Ninja" ended, and I *still* somehow ended up remembering it. But basically, my entire point here, guys, is that the movie felt like it had a bit of an identity crisis. And that may be due to the fact that this movie had 7 writers credited for this thing. Which wouldn't surprise me if that was the case, considering all of the randomness that just came in towards the second half of the movie.

Speaking of something that I hinted at earlier, let's about another issue that sort of bothered me a bit, which is the pacing. Now for the first 20 minutes or so of the film, I was actually invested into what was going on. The set-up was actually pretty interesting, and I wanted to see if the film would be able to keep that pace at a consistent rate. Unfortunately, by the time I said that, the movie slowly started to go downhill, and the pacing mostly attributes to that. See, once our characters get into the house, they start setting up their equipment while they are busy trying to explore the house. And that's what mostly happens for a little over 20 minutes into the latter first half of the film. Nothing else of interest really happens during these 20 minutes other than padding. Which is not a good sign at all, especially considering that this is how the movie wanted to spend the remaining first half of it's runtime. Now I probably would've given this pacing issue more leeway if we had gotten the time to know more about these characters. And unfortunately, you really don't get to know them all that well. I only know of two of the members by name, which are Peter Savage, our main character, and one of the girls being named Debbie. That's it. And even then, they're all basically just there for the sake of this mission and development surrounding them is mostly just non-existent. As for our villains, Lamar is basically just a corrupt Lieutenant while Tanner really doesn't have much of anything going for him until towards the end of the movie. You don't very much about the bandaged-up guy that's been trying to get to the abandoned house other than the fact that he's Lamar's brother, and I'm going to assume he was only let out just so he could cause trouble and possibly kill the entire film crew at the abandoned house. Though that part isn't entirely made clear, nor do we ever find out anything about who or what happened to the guy wearing the pantyhose over his head upon releasing Lamar's brother from the mental hospital.

So yeah, guys, the writing here is just ridiculously flawed in a whole lot of areas. Now normally, I would cover acting next, but I actually want to skip ahead a bit and talk about one of the other big problems this movie suffers from, which is the lighting. You see, guys, for about a good portion of this movie, most of the film is shot in darkness. If I had to take an estimated guess, I would say about 80% of the movie is filled with darkness. And I'm also going to take a guess here and say that this movie was filmed on a pretty low budget. Which would make sense, given that Olsson's other movies were also filmed on low budgets. But going back to the lighting issue, regarding the low budget that this movie possibly had, I'm going to assume that they didn't use a whole lot of stage lighting for most of this movie. And I will say that in some areas, the darkness isn't too bad. But in the later scenes, especially during the scenes where our heroes are trying to outrun Lamar's gang through the caves, the darkness really starts to become an issue, because you really can't see a whole lot of what's going on. There are some instances where some light is shown, but a lot of it is still covered in darkness, and for a good portion of these scenes, a lot of it is just gonna be really hard to make out. Now it could be possible that this may just be the version of it I watched on YouTube, and if this thing were re-remastered on DVD, Blu-ray, or even 4K, I have a feeling that these scenes would be much clearer to see. But with the way that it is now, it's not gonna be the case. So you better have good eyes in trying to figure out what's going on during these scenes involving darkness. Otherwise, it's not exactly gonna be a pleasant viewing experience for you.

Now that I've gotten that part out of the way, let's actually go back through this proper and actually talk about the acting next. Now seeing as how this movie was originally filmed in Sweden, a lot of the actors here probably didn't speak proper English, so a lot of their dialogue was dubbed in by actors who spoke proper English. Well...proper is a little bit of a stretch, because the acting in this dub sounds wooden as fuck. Almost every actor here sounds about as wooden as possible, save for maybe Gareth Hunt as Lamar. He's the only actor who, I think, properly spoke English in the film, while everyone else had to have their lines dubbed in. Which definitely shows, if that is the case, because Gareth was the only one who was given a little more free reign to work in his dialogue. Everyone else, no. Almost nobody else here sounds natural, and it's kind of a double-edged sword here. Because on one hand, since most of the acting sounds wooden as hell, it's probably gonna be viewed by most people as being rather un-listenable. On the other hand, some of this wooden acting can just seen as being laughably bad. Enough to where someone could probably have a lot of fun riffing on this thing, if they wanted to. So hey, at least there is that. But otherwise, guys, the acting here isn't really that good. However, given that the other two movies from Olsson also had the same kind of issue, it's sort of par for the course here. So it's really just a case of take it or leave it for what it is.

Camerawork here is OK for what it is. I've already touched upon the lighting in great detail, so I'm gonna skip that one. The sound-mix is actually really competent here. And the score here is actually OK, too. Granted, it's not something I'm gonna go out of my to listen to again, but I can at least say the music here is OK for what it is.

Ultimately, guys, when all is said and done, am I able to recommend "The Forgotten Wells"? Um...gosh, how the hell do I answer this one? Well, I'm almost tempted to say no...but then again, considering that I was more invested into this movie than I was with "The Ninja Mission" and "The Russian Ninja", that is certainly saying something. Not a lot, mind you, but still, it's at least something. So what I'm trying to say is that I can kind of recommend it. Kind of, but you have to go into it with the right mindset. For example, if you have an appreciation for B-Movies, then this one will certainly be right up your alley. If you want to riff on something with friends on a bad movie night, then by all means, check this movie out. It might actually make for some really fun riffing material. In fact, I might even put a link to this movie for you guys to watch in the description in case you guys are interested in watching it. But with that being said, if you're looking for a good movie, then fuck no. This movie is movie *far* from good. Though in my opinion, it is better than both of the movies from Olsson I just listed. So if anything else, at least that's some sort of an accomplishment. A minimal accomplishment, but an accomplishment nonetheless. Now...I'm gonna go and watch something else. Well, seeing as how the main character for this movie looked like a clean-shaven version of Snake Plissken from "Escape From New York", I think I'm gonna go and watch that next. I still love that movie to pieces, so I'm gonna go and do that next after I get done typing this review up.

And with that, guys, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. And next week, guys, I'm gonna be doing another round of the "Video Game Movie Marathon". So stay tuned for that if you're curious. Until then, guys, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.